The peloton is an amazing thing. It has a chaotic predictability to it, the fact that you’re in control of your own bike, yet also absolutely not at the same time. It controls 80% of your movements, and leaves you to play with the other 20%. A sports director’s race briefing is centred around being in the right part of the peloton at the right time, and that is almost always the difference between winning and losing.
A rider can be physiologically capable of winning Milan-San Remo, but if they can’t enter the bottleneck – the entrance to the Cipressa – placed amongst the top-30 riders without expending too much energy, then I’m going to say that it is an impossible task to actually win that race.
The riders that are loved
Key features of this first category of rider include you being chatty, friendly, generous and gracious with your movements in the bunch. You point out potholes and warn other riders and teams during racing; you let riders into or across your team’s line when they ask or need, and you basically go out of your way to help competitors and congratulate them if they do well, even if it’s to the detriment of your own team.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that this creates a perception of you not actually being competitive in a fundamentally competitive environment, but there is a good reason for this, which I’ll get to. You do need to be a reliable wheel to follow, you don’t crash, and you don’t get dropped in an echelon, a steady and reliable Eddie.
You’re almost worthy of captain of the peloton status. If there’s a new rider in the bunch, even those not in your team, you may offer some words of wisdom or say hello. It’s completely unnecessary friendliness, and you’ll be lulled into a false sense of security, thinking this category one rider is just a harmless and nice guy. Almost too nice.
But don’t be fooled by all these niceties; it’s a ploy, a mask. You’re emotionally unable to be a feared category two rider, so you’re using your friendliness to do your dirty work for you. All the niceness is basically owed favours being banked at all times. You let someone in the line when they need it – that is a favour owed. You’re going to get that back at some point when your team is up front, and you need to get there. You’ve spent years crafting this reputation, and it pays you back every single race.
The riders that are feared, disliked or just a liability
There are three sub-categories here, but they amount to the same thing. Key features of a category two rider are that you don’t give an inch to anyone – racing is no time to make friends – and that there’s no pleasant small talk unless it’s with your teammates. Everyone knows you don’t give a damn what happens behind your bottom bracket. This could be because you’re intentionally being a bit of an arse or blissfully unaware of your surroundings; ultimately, it doesn’t matter, as the outcome remains the same.
Everyone else stays as far away from you as possible in the bunch, and that’s the exact outcome you want. If you are fighting for a gap with another rider, they concede immediately as they know you won’t. You’re the kind of guy that takes your own bottle from your bike, puts it in your back pocket and rides up the side of the bunch screaming ‘service!’ Everyone follows peloton rules and gets out your way, and then when you arrive at the front of the bunch, you pop that bottle back in your bike because the only thing you were servicing were your own interests.
Everything is an opportunity to fight, and if an argument starts, you will fight loudly. You are often severely disliked until a rider becomes your teammate, then somehow you become the best, most loyal and loved colleague. They realise their preconception about you wasn’t wrong, but they feel bad for the hatred towards you now that you’re one of the best teammates they’ve ever had.
A liability is also a way to enter this category. Bike handling isn’t your strong point, and the peloton knows it. You may be a nice person, but if a crash happens, then you’re either in it or have caused it because you definitely won’t have avoided it. Your team knows this, but knows the potential in you is there if you’d just stay on your bike. Either way, the peloton gives you space because they also enjoy staying on their bikes.
The riders that are respected
You might be looking at this title, thinking what the difference is between this and riders in category one? Well, this is the halo rider category. You can be in this category and category one or two.
Pogačar, Sagan, Evenepoel, Van der Poel, Vingegaard, Van Aert, Cavendish, you get the jist. Riders who you feel like, even though you’re on the same line as them, you’re not in the same race, or barely the same sport.
The only reason you don’t ask for a selfie is that you have too much pride pretending you’re competitors. Technically, on paper – that thin piece of paper being the start list – you are, but after the flag drops, the similarities end abruptly.
There’s also a place here for the peloton captains, who have served for over a decade as category one riders and earned themselves the right to shift into category three, too. Erviti, Eisel, Lastras, Durbridge, and Hansen are some examples that spring to mind.
They’re not offered the same freedoms as the halo riders, though. What you can’t do is be in category two, a rider that is feared, disliked or a liability, and transition into category three; you’re only allowed to start in category three and also be in category two.
With the feared and halo rider types, generally, you’re more predisposed to be unaware of your surroundings than intentionally reckless, and given you’re here as a halo rider, you’ll have a team helping manage that aspect of your racing to deliver you to a point of winning.
But as with all of these categories, there are exceptions, and Peter Sagan was a prime example. His superior bike handling skills meant he did not need a team to get him to the right place at the right time; he developed a bit of a reputation for doing that at a cost to others who would usually come out worse if they took him on. So from experience, you just didn’t, you let him do what he needed to do.
Category three is an interesting group, especially with the recent comments of Tiesj Benoot around how Van der Poel and Pogačar’s movements influence everyone else in the bunch. There’s another layer here that is racing actually gets easier for them, and they’ve fully earned it, they’re halo riders.
Put yourself in the shoes of a neo pro, you’ve got your team behind so conceding the gap isn’t an option. They are relying on you to move them up the peloton, and you’re faced with a choice of two riders to squeeze; one to the left and one to the right, and you have to pick one, or someone’s going to crash. To your left is Evenepoel, to your right is another neo pro. I promise you that they’re going to pick the neo pro because you don’t ever want to be the guy responsible for wiping out one of the hitters.
The reason you must be an extreme in this category is, as I said earlier, due to peloton mobility. The ease with which you can manoeuvre yourself around the peloton to get to the right place at the right time and stay there. If you’re not any of these, then you may well have a higher chance of being pushed around in what is a dog-eat-dog world, friendly or not.
I’d put these reputational groupings above a marginal gain; this is racing, and how a rider is viewed by their peers can be tough to see within the data we get, but if you look for it, you can find it.
The riders that are a loved liability (a bonus, unicorn category)
I’m not in the business of naming names in this column, and I really can only think of one rider who fits this bill from my time in the bunch. A race-winning machine, fiercely friendly but an utter liability you needed to steer clear of in the bunch. Who? I’ll leave you guys to wonder.
P.S. I have secretly enjoyed referring to Pogačar as a category three rider, with myself residing in category one (or I liked to think so anyway). It’s the only time that’ll happen!